All Night Long

Students who pull all nighters have slightly worse grades than those who don't.

Look, as one who has been there, there's a reason you pull an all nighter - because you've slacked off the rest of the time!

But another study is needed. For those who have slacked off so far, and have an exam tomorrow, is an all nighter helpful?

And further - do some people have more "all nighter capacity" than others?

If you've procrastinated,
Then getting caffeinated
To cram for the exam
May be your last chance
To enhance and aid
Your grade.

Thank You Senator Blutarsky

The Wall St. Journal quoted Animal House in their lead editorial today:

Otter: I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.

The point of the editorial is to complain that the Democrats in Congress have been engaging in futile gestures - and getting nothing done.

I read it, and grinned, and mumbled in shock:
We've stumbled into gridlock!

Perhaps we've missed out on some good new laws,
But I believe there's adequate cause
To think that most of them would have been bad.
So thanks for the fortunate year we've had!

Difficulties of Faith

In 1998, Huckabee signed a newspaper ad supporting a Baptist statement about marriage, which included this traditional gem:

"A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

And he recently offered some unique commander-in-chief qualifications:

"These are people that want to kill us. It's a theocratic war. And I don't know if anybody fully understands that. I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree."

But despite bragging about that degree, he's refusing to release his old sermons.

The trouble with pulling ahead
Is that everyone starts reviewing
And satirically pooh-poohing
The stupid stuff you've said.

Twisted by Knaves

Old joke:
Girl: Do you like Kipling?
Boy: I don't know. I've never kippled.

But, seriously, thanks to faustin for alerting me to the fact that David Friedman was making some interesting posts about Kipling, right around the same time as I was posting about Kim, his most famous novel.

On the train ride home from book club I was thinking about the peculiar, evasive way that Kipling is usually attacked by critics. And then I saw what Friedman posted earlier today:

Kipling had a very high reputation, especially as a short story writer, early in his career, but fell out of critical favor later, I think mostly for bad reasons. Certainly he had politically unpopular views--but they weren't the views generally attributed to him.

I think that's 100% correct.

Kipling was a live-wire writer, charmingly readable, sharply observant, ready with ridicule for false pieties, equally ready with profound respect for what really works in this world. He wasn't so much an analytical type, but he was tremendously interested in clashes of culture, wherever they occurred. With all his love for other cultures, he repeatedly makes it vivid that Western culture is vastly superior at some things - things like technology and law. And that remains a strangely dangerous idea.

He remains a third rail to the Left,
With a kind of bug-zapper appeal,
For his ridicule leaves you bereft
Of your last multi-culti ideal.

Kimperialism

Tomorrow at book club we discuss Kim, by Kipling.

Kim is an Irish orphan, born in India. He transgresses identity boundaries gleefully, pretending to be this or that caste or religion, blending in so well that even the wise are fooled.

Meanwhile, he helps a Tibetan Lama on a spiritual quest, and spies against the Russians for Her Majesty's government.

So, is he a lovable rascal, or a colonialist oppressor of The Other?

I must admit, I took great joy
In this simple complicated boy.

Unsolitary Solstice

Saturday evening we're having a Winter Solstice Party at our house in Chicago's charming Beverly Hills neighborhood.

Bring a cheap gift for the funny donor-guessing game. The gift should express a hidden feature of your own wonderful self.

It's not quite the solstice, Saturday,
But what does that matter, anyway?

Who's Driving This Thing?

Uh oh. Some study claims that humans are evolving really fast... right now!

"Selective pressures are still at work; they just happen to be different than those faced by our distant ancestors."

Doesn't this sound... like something that could have unforeseen consequences?

I've got a resolution to adopt:
Human evolution must be stopped!

What is unplanned
Must be banned.

Some Say In Ice

For some reason, Russky climatologists seem to have missed the consensus memo. "They simply state that a new little ice age is imminent."

This is bad news for Chicago. We need all the warmth we can get. That's why I support Global Warming - for the sake of our local economy!

And for once I sympathize with the Russians. One serious ice age, and their country is kaput!

It's like the thermostat wars in office buildings. You can never get the temperature "just right" for everybody.

I decree the thermostat
Cannot change from where it's at.

At least, that's what I will decree
Once it's set to suit me.


(Yes, my icy heading arrives courtesy of Robert Frost.)

Democrats Keeping It Interesting

Obama and Oprah vs. Hillary and Bill!

It's like that Celebrity Death Match show.

Hillary has now brought her mother and daughter into the ring!

Now that we've got all these stars,
I think it's time to give away cars.

More Frosting!

My friend madbard seemed doubtful that Wikipedia was a reliable source for the real scoop on "Snowy Evening" by Frost.

Thus I forsook Wikipedia,
And took a look instead
At dead tree media.

You know, books. Ones that directly cited Frost's own views.

There are some indications the last line gave him trouble. Jay Panini writes: "The whole poem may have come to Frost in a flash, but he had great trouble with the last stanza. It was some time before he thought of solving the problem by simply repeating the last line." (p 209) Jeffrey Cramer says: "on the ending of the poem, Frost confessed that he had written the third line of the last stanza in a way that called for another stanza. Frost didn't want another and then was struck with the idea to repeat the line to close the poem." (p 79)

From Louis Mertins we have this quote about how the poem was composed:

"As I remember it, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' was written in just about that way, after I had been working all night long on 'New Hampshire.' But I must admit, it was written in a few minutes without any strain.
Critics think I had that sort of all-night struggle before I could write the little poem I'm talking about. They must have heard me say, sometime or other, years back, that I wrote all night, in connection with 'Stopping by Woods.' But the thing I worked on all night had no struggle in it at all. It's in print, called 'New Hampshire.'. . .Then, having finished 'New Hampshire,' I went outdoors, got out sideways and didn't disturb anybody in the house, and about nine or ten o'clock went back in and wrote the piece about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I'd had an hallucination--little hallucination--the one critics write about occasionally. You can't trust these fellows who write what made a poet write what he wrote. We all of us read our pet theories into a poem." (Quoted in full by Cramer, p 77)

Daniel Smythe quotes Frost on complicated interpretations:

This is the one that gets into the anthologies more than any other. The greatest danger is that your mind will get too busy over a poem. You don't have to get busy at all - just let it alone. On the whole, it's kind of fun. You don't go to the circus to make a lot of discussion - you go to gape. There is nothing hard in that poem, but there is a busy-mindedness that makes people want to know about a little thing like that. What is there to know about it? Somebody wants to know what his name was. Will the woods really fill up? That is the way they treat it. They they write, 'Who was that going home that way at night?' Their teacher puts them up to it. (p 57)

Reginald Cooke has a transcription of Frost responding to deathly interpretations:

I believe Ciardi and others have said- some people have said - it's a suicide poem. That's going some. But he thinks it's a death poem. And you can see how you could say: "Life is lovely, dark and deep." See. "But I have promises to keep. I have heaven to go to, you know." Like that. You could do that. That analogy's in it. Many others. You say, just as I could right now: this is a lovely dark and dep situation, but I've got something [else], I ought to teach a class tomorrow, or something like that. Promises to keep. Company of an evening. One o'clock in the morning - two o'clock. An appropriate thing to say - that stanza is lovely, dark and deep, but I've got to be getting along. And it doesn't mean that you're going to do anything bad. Sounds rather good to me. I can see that someone might turn it the other way, like the old saying, "I used to be afraid to go home inthe dark, but now I'm afraid to go home at all." [Laughter] They think it's like that. And all this metaphorical play and all! (p 123)

Of course, this just addresses
The question of what the poet confesses
Consciously about his work.

Maybe hidden meanings lurk
That he won't admit or doesn't know
Deep in the drift of falling snow.

But I've already written too much, I fear,
So I'm "Stopping" here.

Competitive Interpretations

Over at Rational Jenn my name came up in the comments in a discussion about Robert Frost's famous poem, Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.

One person believes the poem is about death. The other person (a friend of mine) doesn't see that.

I want to say something about that, but first I just want to pause and make an ooh and an ahh about how beautiful this poem is and how great it sounds.

That out of the way, I agree with my friend that the poem isn't obviously about death. It seems to me it's more about: a hard dedicated journey with beauty along the way.

I know that "sleep" is often a metaphor for death, and that "winter" is often a metaphor for dying, and ditto for "night," but I think you have to be careful about assuming that Frost is following that particular strategy. I'm sure you can make a case for it, and English teachers often do, but I think their students often resist this reading for a reason - namely that the poem makes sense without that interpretive overlay.

Frost, himself, for what it's worth, disclaimed the "temptation of death" reading.

Amazingly, Wikipedia reports that the poem was written in a few minutes, and that Frost claimed "It was as if I'd had a hallucination."

O Muse,
I promise that I will not refuse,
Such hallucinations as you choose
To send my way.

Let's see, how about "Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Day"?
Oops. Possible copyright violation. Not okay.

Bush Hatred

Joshua Zader wrote an insightful reply recently on Bush Hatred. He tackled it in a kindly, reasonable fashion, for which I admire him.

You are no doubt right that Bush’s stature and power cause him to be hated (or loved) more than we would an ordinary man. And yet, on some level, does our integrity not require that we judge him by the same human considerations that we would judge a relative or neighbor or acquaintance?

I think this can be a hard perspective to maintain, especially when one's hopes and fears are tied up in some politician's performance.

I'm not saying 'do not judge'. Go ahead and judge!

But look at them squarely,
And judge them fairly.

On a somewhat related topic, I recently mentioned somewhere that Republicans tended to disgust me more than Democrats. Someone asked me why that was. The short answer is that I get disgusted when someone like Bush talks up the free market and then passes more entitlement giveaways (like Medicare Part D).

When supposed free marketers go flip flop
I feel my stomach drop.

Sean Taylor, Murdered By Burglars

Leonard Pitts, a black columnist, has an article lamenting the murder of Sean Taylor.

And this is how we die. We die in profligate numbers. Just under 15,000 Americans were murdered in 2006. Roughly half of them -- 7,421 -- were black. African-Americans are 12 percent of the nation's population.

It's a terrible problem. As Pitts indicates, it's mostly black-on-black crime. He wonders why we haven't had a government task force on the topic. It's a good question.

Is the topic somehow taboo?
Or does everyone just lack a clue
About what the heck to do?

Planet Splitsville

Divorce causes global warming!

I have a solution: Offsets.

If you divorce, you must foot the bill
For a wedding ceremony in Brazil.

Boiler Trial And Error

Marsha called me at work to say she'd had to turn our steam boiler off, because it didn't have enough water in it. Not good. It's frozen outside.

Our boiler guy told her over the phone to let it cool down and then put some more water in, but she wasn't sure how. The diagram that came with the boiler was cryptic to the amateur.

I figured it out by studying the pipes. There was some trial and error involved. First I OVER filled the boiler. Then I drained it completely. Finally I got it to the desirable half-way mark on the site glass. I turned it on again. So far so good. It's warm in here again.

Hurray, we have heat for the night.
Half empty, half full, just right.

Voting For Elections

Thank you, people of Venezuela, for not giving this guy a guaranteed job as boss-for-life.

Taste, Chavez, this bitter cup.
Now... if you'd only shut up!

One Down, More To Go

Rome's chief of parking has been fired.

He got photographed using a handicapped sticker that belonged to an 86 year old woman.

It warms my heart,
But it's only a start.

This is just small-time corruption. There are some big-time types, in today's election news, who I hope have it coming someday.

Chavez and Putin
Badly need bootin'.

Currency Paradox

Airbus says its very existence is threatened by the low U.S. dollar.

American airplanes must now look like low-priced bargains on the world market.

The way the dollar's going
Is bad for vacations in France.

But the folks at Boeing
Are doing a victory dance.

At The North Pole Re-Education Camp

The language police and the weight police are out to reform Santa:

Newspapers abroad have been filled with headlines bemoaning the plight of Australian Santas ordered not to say “ho, ho, ho” for fear of offending women or scaring children, and British Santas sent to boot camp to lose weight.

And our own acting Surgeon General is getting in the act:

“It is really important that the people who kids look up to as role models are in good shape, eating well and getting exercise. It is absolutely critical.”

Is it really critical
Or maybe just political?

Ho Ho Ho
Santa's got to go!

We'll replace him with someone cautious and thin
Who checks out exactly what subgroup you're in
And changes his language to never offend
But when he goes back up the chimney again
He'll leave you no gifts - they're materialistic!
And circling the globe is imperialistic!
So he'll sit at home and just send out emails
Careful to never write "Ho ho!" to females.

Unbearable Insult

This nice British lady, Gillian Gibbons, was teaching school in Sudan. She had a name-the-teddy-bear vote in her classroom. The kids voted to name the bear... Muhammad.

So now she's in jail, serving a 15 day sentence for insulting Islam.

Wait. Can I sentence the judges to jail for insulting my intelligence?

In Sudan on Friday, thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and swords and beating drums, burned pictures of Gibbons and demanded her execution.

Sudan's top clerics said in a statement Wednesday that the full measure of the law should be applied against Gibbons, calling the incident part of a broader Western "plot" against Islam.

Hatred on the streets!
It must be a plot
To make a religion of peace
Seem like it's not.